Since daylight savings time (yuck!) has passed, it’s time I remind all of you to not only change the batteries in your smoke alarms but also in your battery-operated sprinkler clocks. Get busy or you will soon see the results of your procrastination.
The best thing to do in October is plant! It is the best time of year to start your trees and shrubs.
And give your existing trees, lawns an shrubs a good feeding with fertilizer high in Phosphorus for healthy roots. That’s the number in the middle of the nutrient analysis. In a bag marked 16-6-8, It is the 6.
Look now for bargains on spring blooming bulbs. You should have ordered early from the bulb catalogues and there may be some good deals available through the catalogues or at your local nursery/ big box store.
Get your bulbs in the ground as soon as possible. December is too late. Plant the bulbs three times the depth of the bulb, water well, and Happy Spring!
Fertilize your roses and keep them well watered but don’t prune now. You should remove spent blooms though, because you will encourage some bonus blooms before the plant starts it’s winter stasis.
Gosh! I had so much fun preparing for, and giving a little talk on some options for organic weed and insect control for Lyn Shirley’s Environmental Horticulture class at Victor Valley College this afternoon. In order to be clear-headed, I did some review on materials in preparation for my talk so I could keep my thoughts organized. I got to reminisce about the olden days before Round-up and weedeaters. Yes folks, I really am that old. AND I (as I usually do in these things) learned something new. Actually it is quite old, just new to me. ROCK DUST as a soil amendment. Keep that thought. I plan on researching that and will offer up new info here on this blog real soon.
Ok, with fall upon us and winter not far behind, most of us are just grateful at getting through the spring and summer weed season. So you are not probably thinking about weeds right now.
But really, getting rid of spring weeds starts right now! Fall and winter, before most weeds begin is the best time to solve your weed problem.
If you wait until spring, winter rains will give the weeds a head start. Once they are above the soil, they have to be killed AND removed. No easy task in planted or gravel areas. Because we are licensed by the state to spray, we have access to the best professional quality products to do the job and the training and experience to do the job correctly the first time.
Most people don’t know that weeds can be prevented before they pop up! We also can apply professional-strength weed preventers ( called pre-emergents) to your problem areas and keep those weeds from ever showing up at all. Be prepared this year. It will be less hassle and cost.
You’d be a little strange not to be concerned at least a little about running into a snake outdoors here in the high desert of Southern California. We got snakes. Lots of snakes. But how do you tell if they are deadly? What do you do if you or someone you love gets bit? The answers to those questions and more are lurking in our September newsletter. Check it out here: Snakes in the garden and more.